The NHS will spearhead a project to identify areas where it can save money and resources by reducing its carbon footprint. The NHS SDU, in collaboration with NHS SBS and @UK PLC, will be analysing and interpreting NHS data to identify areas where the organisation’s carbon footprint can be improved.

Due to @UK PLC’s technical breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence and NHS SBS’s extensive data set, this will be the most comprehensive NHS Carbon Footprint report to date and is set to deliver billions in cash and carbon savings.

Local MP Richard Benyon, Minister for the Natural Environment concurs

“I am very pleased and proud that a local company @UK PLC is delivering this innovative national service for the NHS, and helping address the important issues of cost savings and carbon reduction”

In 2008 the NHS SDU calculated the carbon footprint of NHS expenditure at a national level, which at that stage, was the largest scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon footprint project of any organisation in the world.

The new NHS Expenditure Carbon Footprint Project aims to build on this initial project, extending the collection of expenditure data from the national level to all NHS organisations, such as suppliers, GPs, dentists and pharmacists. The aim is to help inform decision making, revealing where carbon hot spots are and which suppliers and types of goods and services purchased contribute most to the carbon footprint.

NHS Shared Business Services and @UK PLC will be collecting and analysing the data on behalf of the NHS SDU. NHS SBS works with over 40% of NHS organisations across the UK and the breadth of data made available by the organisation will result in a comprehensive national picture of NHS’s carbon efficiencies and hotspots.

Furthermore, the increased scope of the project has been made possible through the technical breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence by @UK PLC supported by the University of Reading and Goldsmiths College London. The technology allows for the automated analysis of finance system data to identify and categorise the individual items being purchased for the first time.

All the NHS organisations participating in the project will receive a summary of the carbon footprint of their current procurement activity and will be offered the option to upgrade to either, or both, a chargeable Spend Analysis and Carbon Analysis service. The spend analysis capability from NHS Shared Business Services provides organisations with a detailed breakdown of potential cash savings and was used last year by the National Audit office for its report identifying £500 million in savings in NHS consumables. The carbon analysis provides a detailed breakdown of the organisations’ carbon footprint to further inform their carbon reduction plans and actions.

“The NHS SDU is pleased that NHS organisations are getting the opportunity to identify carbon hot spots in their procurement carbon footprint at no cost. The analysis could also provide greater transparency about which suppliers, products and types of organisation are the biggest contributors to the NHS England procurement carbon footprint.

“Achieving the targets set out in the Climate Change Act will only be possible with increased transparency about the carbon footprint of goods and services we buy.”

In addition, the spend analytics capability from NHS Shared Business Services already provides anonymised data intelligence for around £41bn of total NHS non pay spend.

“NHS Shared Business Services and @UK have been working together for a number of years to support the NHS in understanding it’s spend activity. We are delighted to be able to utilise our spend analysis capability to put this data intelligence to further use, and are excited about working with the NHS SDU to heighten awareness of the NHS’s carbon footprint. We are also very pleased to be part of a national programme that will be integral in helping reduce the carbon footprint across the NHS.”

The resulting analysis will supplement the new NHS SDU report into the updated NHS Carbon Footprint due out early next year and will continue the NHS's lead as the first organisation to have an in-depth understanding of its carbon footprint.

Ronald Duncan, Chairman of @UK, commented: - “It is a privilege to be working with NHS SDU who are international leaders in understanding the supply chain carbon footprint, and we believe that our Artificial Intelligence technology will make a significant impact in the understanding of the NHS Expenditure Carbon Footprint.

“This builds on our established relationship with NHS Shared Business Services, and helps NHS organisations to identify both savings and carbon reduction in a single set of analysis.

“We hope to extend this solution out to the rest of public and private sector.”

- Ends -

Notes to EditorsAbout NHS SDU: www.sdu.nhs.uk The NHS Sustainable Development Unit is a dedicated national unit set up to coordinate and stimulate sustainable development systematically across the NHS. It provides leadership and helps develop organisations, people, tools, policy and research to ensure the NHS fulfils its potential as a leading sustainable and low carbon organisation.

About NHS Shared Business Services: www.sbs.nhs.ukNHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) is the market leader in business support services for the NHS. It is a unique joint venture between the Department of Health and Steria, and currently provides Finance & Accounting, Payroll & HR, Family Health Services and Commercial Procurement Solutions to all types of NHS organisations. More than 27 million people in England have NHS healthcare delivered by NHS SBS clients.

NHS SBS provides a range of value added services to enable NHS trusts to focus on strategic decision making and business improvement activities, whilst benefiting from operational efficiencies and real cost savings of between 20% and 40%.

With over 1,400 people employed, NHS SBS recovers more than £12 billion of debt, pays 200,000 NHS employees and processes £36 billion of payments per annum for its NHS clients.

NHS SBS works with over 40% of NHS organisations to deliver operational efficiencies, cost savings and improved service quality, and is on target to deliver £250 million of cost savings to NHS trusts and organisations.

About @UK PLC: www.uk-plc.net @UK is Europe's leading Cloud Platform with over 1 million users, which is used for University and College's procurement along with Local Authority, Schools NHS and other Government and Private sector procurement.Richard Benyon MP, Minister for the Natural Environment launched the @UK Green Ecommerce Marketplace back in October 2010, and it is now the largest repository of product carbon footprints in the World.The GeM marketplace for Universities on Colleges is the only card based national marketplace in the world and was successfully delivered for the 800 Universities and Colleges and the 680 National Suppliers, proving that Cloud Ecommerce delivers large complex projects for Government on time and budget.@UK was used by the National Audit Office to identify over £ 500 million in savings for 25% of NHS spend. The ground breaking SpendInsight system used to identify the savings resulted in the award of 2 PhD's in artificial intelligence.@UK delivers key government commitments of Savings Sustainability, and SME Inclusion along with support for Start Ups. @UK PLC has now created over 200,000 start up businesses and recently launched a new Cloud-Start-Up.com service to provide a complete suite of cloud business software to startups along with the essentials of Limited Company, Bank Account, Domain Name, Email, Ecommerce, Accounting system and membership of the @UK business club.@UK is included in the Software and Computer Services Sector (9530). For further information please visit the @UK PLC websitesInvestor Site http://www.uk-plc.net/investMain Site http://www.uk-plc.netSpendInsight Site http://www.spendinsight.comCloud-Start-Up.com http://cstartup.com